Daughters of the Marluk
by Morwen Tindomerel
Summary: AU in which Charissa's twin Clarissa does not die in infancy and grows up to be a very different woman than her sister. Oodles of OCs
1. Chapter 1

Hassan al-Rafiq rose, gathering his dusty black robes around him, stepped from the barge and slowly, heavily mounted the steps of the quay. Marble glowed honey gold and creamy white and jeweled tiles glistened in the light of conjured fires captured in crystal spheres atop bronze-gilt posts. Those same arcane lamps lined the long, long switchback stair cut into the steep side of the great pier of rock thrusting out into the river, the waters of the Beldour foaming white around its base.

At the top of the stair massive brazen gates stood open in a cyclopian wall, guarded by a half-score of Moors robed in the vivid green and orange colors of Termod of Vechta. Hassan passed without challenge, he was known here.

The Palace fortress of Mor Montarago was accounted one of the wonders of the Eastern World but Hassan gave not so much as a glance to the twilit gardens, still green in the mild late autumn of the southlands, the marbled porticoes and colonnades limned in lamplight, or the silvered domes gleaming in the watery dusk. He was blind to their beauty, intent on his errand.

Finally he approached a pair of silver doors, inlaid with jeweled figures and flanked by green garbed guards. One reached across and opened half a leaf for him. The room within was hung all around with curtains of sea purple interwoven and bordered with gold. Oil lamps of pure gold shaped like birds in flight hung from many armed stands like trees of gold. An under-chamberlain sat at a high podium desk and three secretaries bent over their work at a long table against one wall, all smooth cheeked as boys and clad in white, the chamberlain wearing a golden chain of office. They glanced up only briefly then returned to their labors.

Hassan pushed aside a purple curtain concealing a small door leading to a little mosaic paved courtyard with a silent fountain at its center. Under the portico at the far end was a second pair of silver doors, these guarded by slender, girlish figures robed and veiled in scarlet and orange and armed with silver inlaid spears. They saluted as he approached and flung both halves of the doors wide for him.

Inside was a cloistered garden scented with spent roses and winter jasmine, tinkling with the music of fountains. More girl guards stood under the shelter of a deep many pillared veranda at the far end flanking three great doors open to the evening air and giving onto a wide hall. Fluted alabaster columns upheld an arched and cusped ceiling, carved and fretted like frozen lace, high above an expanse bejeweled, tessellated floor. The ladies of the Duchess' court were gathered there, reclining on carpets and cushions around glowing braziers strumming dulcimer or lute, turning the pages of books or moving exquisitely carved game counters over inlaid boards. Barefooted serving maids, gowned in white, padded softly from group to group offering cinnamon flavored coffee and trays of sweets. The warm, scented air was murmurous with music and low conversation on poetry, philosophy, history and arcana. The Court of the Marluk was noted for scholarship.

A lady chamberlain, also in white with a silver chain around her neck, rose from her cushions to greet Hassan with a bow and gesture silently for him to follow. She led the way through frescoed corridors lit by silver lamps and rooms glowing like jewel boxes with shimmering mosaics and delicate furnishings of wood and stone veneered in semi-precious gems. The sound of muted voices came from behind a pear-wood door inlaid with arabesques of silver and flanked by another pair of girl-guards. The chamberlain opened it and Hassan swept past her into a small room hung with arrases patterned in apricot, amber and gold, his boots sinking deep into the snowy fleeces covering the floor as he made a short bow to the woman resting on the carved ivory couch; the Princess Clarissa, Duchess of Marluk in her own right and Countess of Vechta by marriage, known as the Moon of Torenth and the Shining One.

Pale hair fell in spiral curls over a rich gown of sea purple eastern silk, embossed with crocus and hyacinth in their natural colors. Diamonds glinted at her throat and upon her hands. She sat up in the hush caused by Hassan's entrance, small white feet burying themselves in the thick fleece carpet. Milky blue eyes, the exact tint of the tiles customarily used to ornament Churches and Mosques, fixed on his face.

"Leave us." the satin and brocade robes of ladies in waiting and pale yellow silks of handmaidens rustled as they filed silently out. The Chamberlain shut the door behind them. Only the giant eunuch, his scarlet lined white robe open to show an expanse of bronzed chest, remained still as a statue behind the lady's couch, ignored by the two intent upon each other.

"She is dead." the Moor said bluntly.

"I know. Do you think my twin-born sister could pass from this life without my feeling it?" a spasm of pain passed over the still, white face. "She suffered."

Hassan's hitherto impassive expression convulsed in an answering agony. "She did!" sudden tears sprang to his eyes as grief, long suppressed, overcame him. "Ai, my little lady, my white one -" his voice broke in a sob.

Clarissa sprang from the couch to guide him gently to a heap of gold and white cushions. "Sit, old friend, rest." The eunuch moved, pouring pale wine from crystal-gilt decanter to matching goblet and handing it to his lady. "Drink this and try not to dwell on a pain that is past. Charissa's soul in in God's hands now, may He be merciful to her!"

Hassan took a gulp of the wine, then looked through his tears at the surviving sister. "She was a noble lady, a devoted and dutiful daughter."

Clarissa cracked a smile. "As I am not?" she settled on the cushions next to him taking his free hand. "Hassan, Hassan, you know better. It was despair not duty that drove my sister. It was death she sought not a crown."

He shook his head angrily, resisting. "No! she wanted her rights, she wanted vengeance -" his voice broke again. "What else had she to live for?"

The Shining One's face, so like her sister's and yet so subtly different, clouded. "There could have been other things. She had me and her godchildren. She had Tolan. She could have made a life worth living for herself."

"And left her father's blood un-avenged?" Hassan cried. "He died by treachery -"

"He died in fair combat in accordance with the Law." Clarissa cut him off sharply. "What treachery can there be inside a sealed circle? God's judgment went to the Haldane. To seek vengeance for that is rank impiety - and Charissa paid the price of it." he tried to answer but she rode over him; "Think, Hassan, how could Human princes new come to their powers possibly have defeated sorcerers as able and practiced as my father and sister were it not God's will that Haldanes should rule Gwynedd?"

"Treachery -" he said again, but uncertainly.

"Treachery how? You witnessed both deaths, tell me!"

He was silenced. She stroked his hand. "Hassan, Hassan, dear friend of my childhood. Do you truly want me to send my son, namesake and heir of your lost lord and friend, to die in Gwynedd? Do you want to see me and my children dead in fruitless quest of a crown like so many of our ancestors before us? Please, may we not rest content with what we have and live in peace?"

He could only shake his head helplessly, long held certainties dissolving into confusion. "It is her right, your right -"

"No, Hassan." Clarissa touched his face tenderly. "It is a threadbare old dream that has already cost us far too much. Let it go, as I have. Honor the dead but let them rest. Go home to your wide plains, take a wife and raise up brave sons and fair daughters to the honor of your house. Embrace life, Hassan, be happy. The lord and lady who loved you would want that, not your blood pointlessly spilled."

Looking into those luminous blue eyes, the color of a clear desert morning, Hassan al-Rafiq saw his rage, his thirst for vengeance, for what they were a facet of despair and so mortal sin. Memories of al-Marluk rushed back, the warmth of his smile, his affectionate arm round Hassan's shoulders, their youthful escapades and the many shared projects of their manhood. Then memories of Charissa as a happy, laughing child before the Shadows took her. Of the warm, loving girl she had been rather than the icy, embittered woman fate had made of her. But even then, after all she had suffered, Charissa had still loved him, the friend of her adored father and protector of her youth. Clarissa spoke true: Hassan's dear lady would not want him to throw his life away in a hopeless try for vengeance, nor Hogan neither.

Slowly, reluctantly Hassan let go of his rage, his blood-thirst, his hunger for vengeance, and with them the all that had been holding the devastation of his heart at bay. He broke down, sobbing inconsolably as child. And the child of his friend, dear as a daughter of his own, cradled him in her arms murmuring comfort.

Clarissa let the man who'd been as a second father to her and her sister weep himself dry, shedding with his tears decades of stored up bitterness and hatred. When the tears finally stopped, leaving him light and hollow and ready to start his life anew, she kissed him then glancing over his shoulder nodded to Albanus, her eunuch. He opened the door and Clarissa entrusted Hassan to the waiting chamberlain.

"Find him a room in the barracks and fresh clothing." she instructed, then to the man: "Sleep, Hassan, deeply, without dreams - or with good ones only." He nodded, still a little dazed by the catharsis of emotion and let himself be led away.

The three handmaidens who'd been in attendance sat quietly in a row against the corridor wall, waiting. "Now to tell my daughters their aunt is dead." Clarissa said half to them, half to herself. "We must pray, pray for her soul. God be merciful to her!"

'Holy Christos, crucified for us, have mercy upon thy servant, my sister!' Clarissa prayed. Beside her a row of pale haired little girls, achingly like Charissa, bent their heads over small, clasped hands, lips moving in earnest petitions for an aunt only the eldest could remember with any clarity. The twin sisters, once so close, had been estranged for a long time before Charissa's death.

The six of them knelt on the layered carpets of Clarissa's private chapel, nurses and handmaidens ranged behind, en-globed by the heavenly blue tiles facing walls and ceiling, the inside of the cupola ribbed with gold and enameled a deeper blue sprinkled with gilt stars. Gauzy curtains, weighted by embroidered images of maiden saints had been looped back to reveal the altar they normally veiled, a cube of blue banked with jeweled lamps. The doors of the silver-gilt tabernacle were set with a pair of exquisitely enameled panels; that on the right showed Hogan Gwernach and his delicate, moon pale duchess; on the left a pair of ivory fair girls, alike as two stars in heaven, robed in lapis and turquoise and crowned with ducal coronets, all adoring the holy sacrament.

'My family, as it never was." Clarissa thought sadly. 'Mother dead three days after our birth. Father killed in mortal combat before our very eyes when we were still mere children. And now my only sister fallen in the same foolish, futile cause - Maria Theotokos pray for her! Beg God your Son to have mercy upon the soul of one bitterly wronged as well as wronging!'

As night deepened around the little chapel nursemaids silently removed the weary children carrying them away to their beds but Clarissa remained kneeling, hour after hour, lips moving in silent, urgent petition:

"- Saints Hesperius, Zoe, Cyriacus and Theodulus, holy martyrs, pray for her; Blessed Sviatopolk, pious prince, pray for her; Saint Sviatoslav, holy penitent, pray for her; Saint Margetan, holy virgin, pray for her; Saints Alix and Anne Orexis, holy penitents, pray for her; Saint Simplicius, bishop and innocent, pray for her; Saints Sava and Triduana, holy companions, pray for her; Saint Basil, Holy Hierarch, pray for her; Saint Pudentiana, holy virgin and martyr, pray for her; Saint Helena, pious empress, pray for her; Saint Elderon, holy knight, pray for her; Saint Vladimir, pious prince, pray for her; Saints Justa and Rufina, blessed matrons, pray for her. Holy Innocents, pray for one who lost her innocence all to early!

Mind and tongue both stumbled as she searched for further intercessors:

"Saint Iob, patron of our house, pray for her! Blessed Phourstanos, pray for your child! Blessed Imre, sainted king, pray for her! Blessed Karoly, pious prince, pray for her! Blessed Ariella, princess and penitent, pray for her! Blessed Torval, dearest uncle, pray for her! Larissa my mother, Hogan my father, souls in paradise, pray mercy for your daughter!" Then on a sudden impulse the most unlikely petition of all: "Saint Camber of Culdi for the sake of Festil III and Blaine I, whose friend and servant you were, pray for an erring daughter of their blood!"

A hand fell lightly upon her shoulder, making her jump. She looked up into the grave, concerned face of Father Basileus, her archpriest and confessor. "Enough, daughter," he said gently, "you must think of the children you carry."

Her hand went instinctively to her still flat stomach, feeling for the lives new budding within. "My sons, my twin sons." who would live long and happy lives tending their estates in Torenth, she vowed silently, not angling for a crown long lost - and well lost!

Basileus helped her to rise. "Go to bed, child."

"Yes, Father." she said, weary and obedient.


	2. Chapter 2

Clarissa fixed her eyes on the radiant face of the Theotokos smiling compassionately down from above the altar as the castrati choir raised their pure, soaring voices in the final anthem.

The jeweled interior of Hagia Iob glittered in the light of a thousand fragrant candles, the richness contrasting with the somber hues of the celebrants' vestments. Clarissa herself was garbed in the purple of royal mourning, kneeling on a faldstool of carved ivory between King Wencit and her husband Termod Furstan-Vechta-Al-Marluk. Her son, Mark-Hogan was just beyond his father and the rest of the congregation, Furstani princes, lesser nobles and courtiers, knelt in black clad ranks behind them.

Charissa's requiem ended at last and Clarissa accepted the hand Wencit extended to help her rise. They processed from the church, Clarissa on the King's arm with Termod and Mark-Hogan a half pace behind them, in a silence finally broken by Wencit as they neared the barges.

"Ride with me my sister and brother, we must talk." Clarissa inclined her head in assent. She'd been expecting this.

The purple curtains of the royal cabin enclosed the three of them in amethystine half light. Clarissa, seated on piled cushions hands folded demurely in lap, shook her head, refusing Wencit's offer of wine, and came directly to the point.

"I renounced my rights to the Festilic succession, for myself and my heirs, nine years ago. I will not go back on that. Charissa made you inheritor of her claims and you are welcome to them. But I want Tolan."

Wencit smiled faintly and threw a glance at his silent half-brother. "Blunt as ever, my Clarissa. And what do you say, Sayid Al-Marluk?"

"That I never had any claim save through my wife, and her wishes in this matter are as mine." Termod answered quietly.

He resembled Wencit it height and build but his lean, chiseled features favored his beautiful mother, Nimur II's beloved but lowborn second wife. Her son had also inherited her thick, ivory pale hair and her serene dignity, but the black, piercing eyes beneath dark, level brows came from his royal father. He was five years Wencit's junior and despite - or perhaps because - of his lesser status as a morgantic son without dynastic rights the two had always been close and fond.

Wencit did not now make the mistake of thinking Termod either weak or henpecked to have chosen to follow his wife in this matter. Indeed there was a hint of genuine relief on the King's thin, triangular face. He did not hold his younger brother lightly as a potential opponent, and loved him too well to wish to be at odds with him.

"Add Tolan to your other holdings and you will govern a full quarter of Torenth." he observed.

Termod smiled faintly. "In what better or safer hands could they be?"

Wencit laughed. He knew very well where he could trust - and where he could not.

Clarissa spoke again, abruptly: "Charissa loved you, Wencit. You are the only man besides our father she ever loved." The King's face tightened in sudden pain as she continued. "For her sake and for Torenth who needs strong, stable rule I beg you not to go to Gwynedd. Claim the crown if you will but do not seek to enforce it! If you do you will die. As Charissa died. As my father died. It is God's will that Haldanes, not Festils rule Gwynedd."

Wencit snorted. "Superstitious nonsense!"

Clarissa's pale blue eyes bored into his. "Is it nonsense that every attempt from Ariella I on down has ended in death and disaster? Our claim - such as it is - stems from an incestuous bastard. Would such be allowed to succeed in Torenth, or any other civilized state? I think not. You have one fair kingdom, Wencit, and rule it well. Rest content with that as I am content with what I have!"

Wencit looked away, covering sudden uneasiness. "And what of vengeance for Charissa's blood, and your father's?"

"Both offered or accepted challenge and fought according to the Code Arcane. I accept God's judgment - and so should you!"

Wencit's head snapped back, pale eyes glaring. "Never!"

"Then you will die." Clarissa said flatly. "And may God have mercy on Torenth!"

The long train of state barges, their gold and silver and nacre inlays glinting in the pale autumn sunlight, put in one after another at the Quai du Roi beneath the walls of the royal palace. The purple curtains were looped back and Wencit gestured graciously for his brother and sister by marriage to proceed him, turning to exchange a few words with an attendant lord.

Termod handed his wife ashore, followed by her two eunuch bodyguards and a pair of Termod's Varangians. They proceeded, arm in arm, down the quay, the crowds of disembarking nobles and attendants parting before them, to their own barge moored a short distance away with the orange banner of Marluk and the green banner of Vechta snapping above it in the chill breeze.

"Clarissa, Wencit is my king as well as my dear brother. Where he leads I must follow whatever I think if his course." Termod said quietly in her ear.

She squeezed his arm reassuringly. "I never would ask you to do otherwise." her face clouded. "I didn't really expected him to heed me."

"Nor did I." Termod's lips set grimly. "Perhaps I can at least keep this folly from costing us our king."

"I hope to God you can."

Then they were engulfed in the confusion of their disembarking retinue: young Moorish nabils in Termod's green and orange livery; more towering Varangian guardsmen with their fair hair and beards hanging in braided tails over scaled steel hauberks and furred cloaks; the Duchess' scarlet clad girl guards; her handmaidens veiled and cloaked to invisibility; her eunuch chamberlains their white livery bordered with black; and a bevy of noble ladies draped in sad colored velvets and brocades.

Young Mark-Hogan came to his parents' side, trailed by his own entourage of governor, arms-master and squires. Termod put an arm about his shoulders. "Come, my son, attend the King's council with me." and the boy's face lit up.

Clarissa kissed her menfolk and watched them sweep up the quay, after the King and other great lords, circled by Varangian guards and followed by a long train of attendants. She smiled a little sadly. Mark-Hogan was thirteen, nearly a man, and not her little boy anymore. Her hand went to her belly, soon she'd have other sons to cosset and pet for a little while before manhood claimed them.

She sent the bulk of her retinue; eunuchs, ladies and guards, directly back to the vast ducal apartments but Clarissa herself, with Albanus, his fellow Mauritius, and a pair of handmaidens, turned aside through a small, hidden door and climbed a winding stair that led directly to the private apartments of the Princess Morag, Duchess of Arjenol.

Clarissa and Termod had decided their five daughters, ranging in age from eleven to three, were too young to suffer through the endless ceremonial requiem and left them instead in the princess' care. Morag had arranged a shorter, simpler service in her private chapel for the Marluki princesses, her own young sons and Wencit's petted bastards.

The stair ended in the Princess' bower, a small but luxurious gold and purple chamber with latticed windows overlooking the river. Morag herself, white of skin, jet black of hair and eye, radiant in the rich purple of royal mourning, sat on a cushioned divan sipping spiced coffee and chatting with Armida de Benevant, her brother's long time mistress and mother of his daughters, a small, delicately made woman with honey colored skin, rich brown hair half hidden beneath a purple edged veil and great, melting dark eyes.

Both ladies rose at once to greet Clarissa, Morag sweeping forward to gather her into a warm, sisterly embrace for a loving kiss before pushing her back to arms length for a long, assessing look. "Are you all right, little one? Not feeling ill nor too distressed I hope?"

Clarissa managed to produce a smile. "My belly is well enough, as for my heart - at least it's over. Nothing more to fear."

"Or hope?" Armida asked gently.

Clarissa shook her head, eyes bleak. "I gave up hope for Charissa long ago."

"What a dreadful thing to say!" Morag exclaimed, genuinely shocked. "Charissa did what she thought was right - and I for one do not blame her! I know you didn't agree Clare but you mustn't be so hard."

Clarissa smiled faintly and declined to argue. "Where are the children?"

"In my little garden." Morag made a move towards a curtained door but Clarissa held her back.

"No, not yet. I want to talk to you first - to both of you."

The handmaidens disappeared silently through another door to join Morag's women and Armida's in the outer room and the two eunuchs took up stations by the stair entrance, their continued presence completely disregarded by their mistress and her friends.

Morag poured a small, jeweled cup of fragrant coffee for Clarissa before settling back among the richly brocaded cushions of her canopied divan. "Now then, little sister, what do you have to say?"

Clarissa, upright on a gilt chair, took a tiny, courteous sip of the spiced beverage before speaking: "As you both know Wencit inherits the Festilic claim to Gwynedd and I am sure it will come as no surprise that he means to press it."

Morag frowned. "Of course."

"Wencit is ambitious." his mistress said matter-of-factly from her place, cross-legged upon a heap of pillows.

"He wants his rights!" Morag protested, "as did Charissa. Gwynedd should be an appendage of our crown."

"It should not." Clarissa said flatly. "Oh I grant you Festil I had a remote claim in the distaff line but he took the crown by force - and his heirs lost it through bad government." Morag opened her mouth to protest but Clarissa continued over her: "As for us we are descended from a bastard born of incest. Since when have such had dynastic rights?"

"Ariella I declared her son her heir and he was legitimated by both King and Church!" Morag replied fiercely.

"And his attempt to reclaim his parent's throne failed miserably." Clarissa snapped back. "As did all succeeding efforts. Dear God, Morag, have you forgotten Rengarth and Killingford? Not to mention my poor father's death and now Charissa's!"

"You fear a similar fate for Wencit should he seek to impose his claim." said Armida.

"Yes! God has made his will clear. He favors the Haldanes not the Festils."

Morag was shaking her head. "Little sister, little sister, you are overwrought and your condition has made you fanciful. Hogan and Charissa were unfortunate, that is all."

"All of our house who have challenged Haldanes over the last two hundred years have been 'unfortunate'." Clarissa answered grimly.

"Wencit has never failed in anything he has undertaken," Wencit's loyal sister declared firmly. "He will not fail now. You will see."

"All else aside he will never leave Charissa unavenged." Wencit's mistress said gently. "Me he loves a little. Queen Euphrosine he loved not at all though he was good to her. But Charissa de Tolan was the woman of his heart - his true mate for all she was forever out of reach."

"And Charissa loved him." Clarissa cried passionately. "The last thing she would want is his death!"

"He will not die." Morag said firmly.

"I pray you are right." said Armida. "But I know my lord too well to believe he can be turned from this course whatever the peril."

And that was the bitter truth. No doubt Wencit would be as deaf to the pleas of his sister and mistress as to Clarissa's own warning even if they could be persuaded to try - as clearly they could not. "I will pray too." she said, resigned.


End file.
